


Like Storybook

by NorroenDyrd



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Books, City Elves, F/F, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff without Plot, Gender-Neutral Hawke, M/M, Non-Canon Inquisitor (Dragon Age), Romance, Trans Inquisitor, Varric Tethras Writes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2017-12-08
Packaged: 2019-02-12 06:24:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12953268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorroenDyrd/pseuds/NorroenDyrd
Summary: A collection of snippets of assorted Inquisitors gushing over Hawke's romantic life after reading Tale of the Champion, and then projecting their fannish excitement onto their own relationships.





	Like Storybook

Varric insists that writing romance is not his strong suit; he thrives on yanking back the veil of propriety and, with a dramatic swoosh, exposing the dark and gritty inner workings of big city life; on tracing intricate plot lines that take many twists and turns and ultimately intertwine in a single point of revelation; on splashing bucketfuls of blood and gore to make the reader's stomach clench in shock. And when it comes to tender affairs of the heart, to kisses with various degrees of tongue involvement, and giggle-filled cuddles, and swoons into the arms on a handsome curly hero or a sword-wielding heroine with fluttering eyelashes and an abdomen of steel... Well, he is far from being a pro here. He still firmly believes that Swords and Shields is his worst series, no matter how much the Seeker may gush over it. And even though he did include elements of romance into the Tale of the Champion - couldn't be helped; not his fault that Hawke and properly laced underwear do not really mesh together - he gets mildly exasperated when people fixate on them.

  
  
'Come on!' he grouses, rolling up his eyes at some arm-flailing fan as they corner him to pry out more details about the great and mighty (and passionate!) Champion of Kirkwall and their romantic interest. 'Didn't you read the book? There is so much more to it than whom Hawke kissed!'

 

  
  
But, whether he likes it or not, the fact remains. There are readers who relish in every moment that passes between Hawke and their beloved. And some of them even consider themselves blessed when, in an uncanny heart-stopping flash, they get to relive some of these moments in real life.

  
  
When Farkhad Adaar, the ridiculously big and clumsy apprentice found by Templars as a baby and raised at a Circle tower, pores over the Tale of the Champion, hunched awkwardly in the much too small, much too tightly packed tent he shares with a few other Circle mages during their stops on the journey to the Conclave, he flushes a little whenever Hawke interacts with Sebastian of Starkhaven. As the narrator of the story, Varric often refers to the exiled prince as Choir Boy, and makes a jibe or dozen about his fervent, 'starry-eyed' belief in the Maker - but what Farkhad sees beyond that is almost a character out of fairy-tale. A scion of a noble family who lost almost everything he had, and is burdened by past regrets, and yet still manages to remain caring and considering and oh so delightfully courteous. Romancing someone like him would be like getting swept into an enchanted storybook... And, even though he would never have dreamed for this to become reality for a chubby, stuttering, awkward fellow like him, Farkhad does get to dive into the sparkly mists of a fairytale, when he gently places one of his ludicrous big hands on the waist of a beautiful Antivan princess (well, perhaps not the same kind as Sebastian, but definitely a princess to him), and leans down to kiss her, and she draws her foot back in a dainty, dance-like pose against the background of a sunset.

  
  
By contrast with Farkhad, Jade Cadash, a runaway dwarf who left Orzammar to get out of a complicated mess her life turned into when she cemented her certainty that she is of the same gender than her noble hunter mother, and not at all of the one her wealthy merchant father assumed her to have when he welcomed the 'boy's' casteless family into his home, reads the Tale not out in the wilderness, with no roof over her head save for sagging canvas, but in the comfort of the little tattoo shop she opened up on the surface, both to make a living and to indulge in her passion for body art. Flipping over the pages reverently with her ink-stained fingers, she rounds her green eyes, eating up every scene where Merrill, the seemingly fragile, doll-like Dalish elf, rushes across the battlefield in a ferocious whirlwind, and makes glowing thorny wines twist round the feet of those who dare attack her vhenan, her darling Champion, or commands the very earth to lurch under their slipping soles, and shoot upwards in a dark jet that instantly solidifies into a rock-hard crust. This is true love, Jade thinks to herself, sniffling slightly, before she lays down the book and gazes ahead, with vacant, dreamy eyes. And when, much later, on the grassy shore of Lake Luthias, the lone Grey Warden raises his shield to block an arrow meant for her, she feels her heart turn into a giant butterfly and flutter off in the general direction of her stomach... And knows.

  
  
Like Jade, Wyon Lavellan also reads Varric's famed novel at his place of work - in the modest little bakery that he owns in an alienage, where he, a perpetually flushed, soft-bellied little fellow, toils hard day and night to turn the scraps his kin are forced to survive on into a pale reflection of the delectable treats in the human store windows. Wyon's copy of the Tale of the Champion is second-hand (more like seventh-hand), with frayed, dog-eared pages and half the back cover missing. His wife has procured it for the family to read - although... He does not even know if they can be called a family, not in the conventional sense: he had to wed by arrangement, as is custom, to secure ties between alienages, and the elders who oversaw the deal had no way of knowing that he was not attracted to women and thus would never lay with his wife as a husband should, becoming instead a bumbling but well-meaning friend to her and the son she conceived with another man prior to their unbearably strained wedding ceremony. His... friend has read the Tethras novel (which she must have pilfered somewhere) in a single gaping, at times drooling sitting, and has shared some of the more child-friendly extracts with her boy (who responded to them with excited 'Woot's and leaps), and has now gotten Wyon hooked as well. Propping up the battered little tome against a sack of the greyish chunky stuff he shyly calls 'flour', Wyon squints at the greasy, yellow-tinted pages, reading some of the trickier words out loud under his breath, with his plump lips moving with slow and deliberate care... And begins to squeal softly when Fenris makes his first appearance, sauntering down a flight of stone steps, his spiky gauntlets dripping with the blood of his enemies, so proud and strong and handsome. He lets out the exact same squeal when, following a mysterious note, he stumbles into the building of a village Chantry, which is swarming with demons - and beholds the man who is lashing at these demons with a whip of conjured fire. Strong. Proud. And so very handsome. Ironically, he belongs to the same circle of people who kept the book hero of Wyon's dreams as a slave - but he does not see the connection, blinded by the stars in his eyes.

  
  
The copy of the Tale that fell into the hands of Ed Trevelyan, a fiery young Circle mage that is finally enjoying the freedom that she has craved so much, is also far from mint condition. The spiky-haired rebel mage, disowned by her family for the 'curse' she carries and hardened by years of enduring isolation and Templar cruelty, has gotten quite enamoured with Hawke and Anders, two apostates on a crusade against injustice - enamoured, infatuated, smitten, perhaps dangerously so, the hot pounding of her own blood rendering her blind to all colour save for seething, wrathful red. The red of a fine line across a Templar's slit throat; the red of the sky over the burning Gallows; the red of the Chantry explosion. When she reads the book all on her own, a fugitive in the wilds in the wake of the Circles' fall, she does not pay much attention to the scene of her idols' first meeting - where Anders was painted not in shades of red, as a merciless spirit of vengeance with death following in his wake, but in soothing blue, as a healer tending to the sick and the hungry and the forgotten in the rancid sewers of Kirkwall's Darktown. She always skims over this part, hungry for 'better', more revolutionary bits. But for some inexplicable reason, she remembers it when, hurtled into the crucible of the Breach, she spots that Inquisition commander race up to a wounded soldier, and wrap his arm around him to help him walk. She man is a former Templar, she later learns; she ought to hate him, like all of his kind - and yet... And yet, when she thinks of him, protective and brave, watching out for his men and sincerely trying to change his outlook on mages, she does not paint his image in red.

  
  
Another Trevelyan in another time, a refined young woman named Anactoria, is not a mage - and so she gets to stay with her sprawling noble clan, groomed for a position of power by her Orlesian mother. She peruses the Tale of the Champion while reclining leisurely on her couch (though her relaxed pose is also the result of years' worth of careful training, even her rest being subject to a stringent code of etiquette that her mother simply adores enforcing, while her Marcher father just shrugs in resignation). Her heart always titters, and her mouth is tickled by a wet saltiness, when she reads the chapter where, as Varric puts it, 'Hawke falls in live with Isabela'). Oh, how she savours every last bit of that bar brawl where the Rivaini pirate queen shows the ruffians coming after her who is stronger. Oh, what wouldn't she give to have someone like that by her side. A gorgeous, confident woman, a cunning rogue with a mischievous twinkle in her eye and her hand extended, to offer a life of danger and adventure of freedom, where they could be their own mistresses, untamed like the sea, and say proudly of the people who would seek to hold them back, 'They do not know us; we know us'. Anactoria cherishes this sensation of thrill, for she thinks it destined to become her only outlet, her only draught of fresh breeze in a world where her life is predetermined from birth to marriage to death. And then, suddenly, the heart titter returns - when she is in the middle of a dark alley, having tracked down some odd (but very aggressive) Orlesian with illusions of grandeur, and a young, bold voice teases her adversary from behind a rat-infested corner, 'Just say "What"?', a split second before an impeccably aimed arrow pierces the clueless buffoon through the eye... And another, invisible one - to coin a cliché - sinks right into Anactoria's heart.

 

  
  
Varric may scoff and shrug irritably at his romances, but for the Inquisitors, they have come to mean more than most of them can describe. For the Inquisitors, the bond between Hawke and their love is a symbol of their own budding relationship. And therefore, precious.


End file.
